Solitude Standing

My clinic is responsive – or at least my doctor is. That’s one of the reasons I switched to his program (well, that and the fact that my old clinic was mangling my husband’s sperm). But there are some calls you don’t want to receive.

Yesterday my doctor called, during his week off, in response to a conversation I’d had with his assistant about this coming cycle. When I went in on Monday, I saw the doctor on call and she and I agreed on the plan for this month being an monitored but unmedicated IUI cycle. I’ve never had my treatment plan change without consulting my actual doctor, so I called his assistant just to confirm that there wouldn’t be a problem with this. She said that this sort of thing happens all the time and that it would be fine.

So Dr. Celebrity called yesterday to confirm. And after that, he asked again if I’d considered IVF. Well, yes of course I’ve considered it. But New York has not yet announced whether their grant program will be renewed and so I can’t apply for it. Even with the grant, we really can’t afford it – but I would somehow find a way to deal with one cycle. Without the grant, it’s near to impossible. I reminded him of all of this and he said that he understood but is concerned about my age.

Hell, so am I. I know that 42 is late in the game to be trying this and while I know that my egg reserve is good and my FSH is still in a reasonable zone, I’ve no idea about egg quality and these past 2 miscarriage cycles aren’t making me feel any more optimistic about them.

The doctor agreed to see this natural cycle through and to do a medicated cycle afterwards if needed and said that then we’d “regroup”. I’ve flipped that word up, down, and sideways and there seems to be no way to read it beside “If this doesn’t work I’m going to cut you off IUIs and give you the ultimatum of IVF or nothing.”

I’m fortunate to have insurance that will cover unlimited IUIs and unfortunate that they won’t cover any IVFs cycles. And my husband and I have committed to seeing this process out through the end of the year. I never thought about my doctor stopping the process particularly now that I know that I CAN get pregnant.

And so the plan, should these 2 cycles not result in a child is:

Beg and plead my doctor into letting me continue on this course

Apply for the NYS grant if it becomes available again and see what they’ll offer

Try to find another clinic that will take me on.

Are any of these ideal? No…..and the hardest part is that somehow I need to put it out of my mind and not stress myself into a useless mess over the course of the next two cycles. Yeah, right……

Thanks Katarina! What’s frustrating is that I’d pretty much made my peace with my “endpoints” and my husband’s (which aren’t always the same thing). I just wasn’t expecting the doctor to through a wrench into it all…..